


Hands Clean

by phobiaDeficient (TheTriggeredHappy)



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Canon Compliant, Gen, Guilt, Mild Spoilers, Zone 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 09:24:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12273558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/phobiaDeficient
Summary: The Batter is left alone to contemplate some things.





	Hands Clean

**Author's Note:**

> [[yeah im still into OFF, what about it?]]

The Batter stood beside the floating red block, and he felt the Player leaving, closing, cutting him off entirely—and not for the first time he wondered whether or not they would come back.

The feeling of a powerful influence releasing you from its iron-clad hold is entirely singular—you go from every muscle pushing against itself, every thought falling into and out of your head in an instant before you can even consider it like a waterfall of consciousness, every idea simply faded away until the whole world was just the drone of painful static, and then suddenly, nothing.

Your muscles relax and you have to catch yourself to keep from just crumpling on the spot, because you haven’t really been carrying yourself for quite some time by then. Your thoughts, previously just a steady stream of mindless apathy, short fragments of fantasy and intrigue that mean absolutely nothing, begin to pool again and hold meaning. Like turning off a fan after having sat with it the whole day, there was only a sharpened silence in lieu of that constant buzz, and it surprises you. Suddenly, you can think, feel, move, and act.

And you’re so tired, you don’t even want to. You just want to sleep.

That’s how the Batter felt just then as he sunk down to sit at the edge of the monorail in Zone 3. Tired. No, exhausted, actually. Injured, too—the blocks were supposed to heal him, and they did, but they couldn’t wash away the remaining scabs from his opened wounds, work the tension from muscles pulled taut from constant movement and fighting, fully fade bruises that lingered and the headache that thrummed dully through his skull until he wanted nothing more than to find the passive embrace of unconsciousness.

But he couldn’t—and shouldn’t—sleep here. The Elsen in this place were taken to Burning, and he didn’t want to be caught unawares. Instead, he sat. Instead, he looked at his hands.

His hands. Callouses red, reduced to blisters just threatening to open. Fingernails cut close, worn even closer. Knuckles bruised from when his bat wasn’t quite fast enough and he had to lash out the old-fashioned way. Then again, the bruises were difficult to see, due to the dark ash.

Ash. On his hands, under his fingernails, filling every wrinkle and line of his palms, and he was glad that he had a black undershirt or he’d have stained his white uniform’s sleeves with all of it. His bat was coated, too, and short lines that were darker than the rest marked where blood had been splattered and caught the blacks and greys within it. He stared at his hands, at the inky blackness, and realized that he was coated in the remains of ghosts and Elsen, at the product of his digging around in their ashes to gather and loot the items from their still-warm corpses.

He wanted to vomit, for a moment.

What was the difference between this primordial powder and the sugar they’d grown to crave? Was it that they had Burned, that they’d destroyed the last of their sanity and mental stability without dying first?

If he fell, would he turn into ash, or sugar?

He shivered.

There was a sound, and he turned, standing, picking up his bat again and staring at the doorway not far off. He poised himself for battle, the dull ache of his wounds becoming background noise once more. From behind the doorway then peered a mask that looked a lot like a cat, a mask that (despite his best efforts) had become familiar to him.

“Alone?” asked Zacharie, and the Batter relaxed.

He sat back on the edge of the monorail platform, letting his legs dangle, staring down at the blackness below. He heard a soft shuffle to one side, saw Zacharie sitting down beside him in his periphery.

A short silence reigned, then a dull clunk as the Batter placed his bat a short ways from the edge, far enough that it certainly wouldn’t fall in but close enough that he could reach for it. Any further would make him fearful, his mind humming with the dull sound of “wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong”. His attention shifted to attempting to clean the charcoal from beneath his fingernails, from the edges of his cuticles. He almost automatically went to chew at his nails with his teeth and felt that wave of nausea hit him again, and he was forced to just pick at them the best he could.

“Hmm,” Zacharie hummed from one side, startling the Batter, who had forgotten that he was there. “That might be a losing battle, my friend. You need a good washing, I think. Otherwise you’ll just move that dust around and around.”

The Batter looked up at him, and he found that he was trapped between wanting to talk and talk and talk, use all his newfound control to say everything he could, and wanting to say nothing at all, just rest now. Just appreciate this new silence.

“Although, I suppose you don’t exactly have a bathtub or shower, do you? Nor even water, now that I think about it,” Zacharie mused aloud, kicking his feet idly as he continued to speak where the Batter didn’t, already used to his stoic silence. “After all, most of the Elsen don’t care to catch the rain since they don’t really need washing. Not many creatures in this place do. There’s only a few beings that aren’t shaped from plastic or tin or sugar or charcoal.”

The Batter looked at him, measuring his words. “Are you?”

Zacharie seemed to be genuinely surprised by the question, and a chuckle bubbled from his chest. “Well, only as much as you are, I’d say, and no more.”

A short pause, the Batter just thinking, breathing. He looked up again, and saw Zacharie wasn’t staring at him expectantly, just looking off into second space. That gave him a bit more confidence. “So…” And Zacharie did turn his head to look at the Batter then, and his words lodged in his throat for a short moment. “…You _do_ have water?”

Zacharie’s shoulders slacked just slightly. “Why, yes, I do. I admit, I had wondered if you even noticed the grime or if you were impassive to that, too.”

A look of discomfort crossed the Batter’s face, and he looked away. “…I don’t think the Player can see a difference,” he said quietly, a confession of sorts, and Zacharie shifted.

“…I presume they can’t see your wounds either, then,” Zacharie asked, and the Batter hesitated before nodding. When he next spoke, his voice was soft. “Oh, you poor thing.”

The Batter visibly bristled, anger welling up suddenly and forcefully for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of. “I am not a _thing,_ ” he snapped in a low growl, “I am a _person._ ”

His mask hid his face from view. He didn’t shout, or raise his voice at all. “My good friend, it’s a figure of speech,” he explained, perfectly calm, perfectly level, enough so that the Batter knew something had to be wrong.

The Batter realized then that his hand had involuntarily gone and reached for his bat, and he let go quickly, retracting his arm, a stab of guilt rushing through his veins not unlike poison. Would he have swung at the innocent shopkeeper if he’d been even just a little bit angrier? What justification could he possibly have for that? Why did his subconscious mind resort to violence so quickly?

A hand on his shoulder distracted him from his thoughts. “If you wish to wash off, I know of a place in Zone 1. It should still be there, as it’s not a living thing.”

The way Zacharie spoke made the Batter realize that the merchant knew. He knew what would be waiting in Zone 1—or rather, all that wouldn’t. Guilt. Guilt.

The Batter found himself nodding, and Zacharie pulled him to his feet, moving the few feet and disappearing as he laid a hand on the red block. The Batter followed him.

Purified. Clean. White. The shadows nothing more than a dull grey, and the Batter was scared to touch anything with his dirtied hands. The Batter felt like something was trying to claw its way out of his chest as Zacharie looked around, expression still hidden. Finally, the merchant just motioned for the Batter to follow and he began to walk.

Across the train tracks, to the mines, through the hordes of… things, up a ladder, past some barns, through one barn and out behind it into a fenced-in area and finally—

“Here,” Zacharie said, gesturing. “I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the best I can do for you for now.”

It was just a basin, full to the brim with water, and sitting near it were some empty watering cans. The Batter deduced that the Elsen likely had to water the grass to keep the cows fed and healthy. He only nodded, walking forward and hesitating for a few moments before he began rolling up his sleeves and shoving his arms into the water.

The water wasn’t as cold as he anticipated, lukewarm and surprisingly pleasant against his sore hands. He bit back winces as he began scrubbing at his marred palms, letting himself concentrate on the task..

He found himself slowly growing less and less upset as he scrubbed away the dried blood and cleaned his wounds in the water. Soon the pool was tinted slightly grey, and his hands were cleaner than they’d been since… god, Zone 0? He couldn’t remember. A short struggle in rolling his sleeve up further resulted in him simply sighing and moving to take his shirt off entirely so he could clean the wounds further up on his arms, feeling like he should wash off the dried blood while he still had the chance. Halfway through pulling off his turtleneck, he remembered Zacharie, and he turned quickly, self-consciousness hitting him full force. But to his surprise… he wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the fenced-in area at all. The Batter’s surprise took a whirling turn into dismay, the thought of being abandoned here suddenly making him upset for reasons he couldn’t quite understand, making something clench in his chest. He pulled the shirt the rest of the way off the free his arms, tense, uncomfortable, distressed.

“Zacharie?” he called, cautiously as he could, aware that there were still dangers in Zone 1 that he didn’t particularly want to attract with noise but needing to know.

And after only a second, Zacharie’s torso leaned into view in the doorway of the barn. The Batter instantly felt much more at ease. Not abandoned, then, just… given space. That was… actually rather considerate. He appreciated the sentiment.

“Um…” Zacharie paused for a second, shifted his mask, cleared his throat. “Did you… um, need something, amigo?”

The Batter realized that Zacharie was probably confused, clearly having expected the Batter to ask him something. But he couldn’t just say “Oh, sorry, I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t ditched me here” or “Hi, I just wanted to mention that you shouldn’t leave because I’m scared of being alone” or “Hey, I have deeply-seated abandonment issues and if you went back without me I would be deeply upset”. He couldn’t say any of those things.

So he went with something safe, neutral. “Do you have any soap?” he settled on, and Zacharie nodded after a second, disappearing behind the door frame. The Batter busied himself with taking off his shoes and socks, and finally Zacharie returned, holding out a bar of soap to him.

“Thank you,” the Batter murmured, and Zacharie froze in place. The Batter looked up at his mask, eyebrows furrowed, and Zacharie shook his head slightly, apparently trying to snap himself out of whatever reverie he was in.

“Ah, it’s just funny, dear amigo…” he explained finally, head tilting to one side. “I… don’t think you’ve ever said that to me before.”

He handed the soap to the Batter and strode back into the building before the Batter could find his words.

The Batter made quick work of washing himself (although the pail was large, it was just a bit too small for him to stretch out in, but he made do). By the time he got back out again, the water, once pristine and clear, was tinted dark grey, and the small bar of soap was entirely gone. He got dressed and after a few moments of consideration decided just to dump the water out into the grass. The darkened liquid sank into the ground and disappeared, leaving it just as blindingly clean as before.

He walked into the barn and saw Zacharie leaning against the wall a yard or two from the door he’d just entered, head tilted forward, arms crossed. “Hey,” the Batter said, and the merchant’s head jerked up, and it occurred to him that Zacharie had been dozing off. “Uh, I’m done.”

“I noticed,” Zacharie said, shifting to stand up, and the Batter rolled his eyes, pulling his cap on over his still-wet hair.

“How much do I owe you?” the Batter asked, and Zacharie stopped again.

“For what?” he asked slowly.

“For… the soap, and, helping me,” the Batter said, and Zacharie just stared at him for a few seconds. Finally, he heard Zacharie sigh, muttering something to himself in Spanish.

“ _No entiendo a veces este hombre_ , listen, just…” The merchant adjusted his mask slightly. “Some things don’t have a price tag, amigo. I suppose the soap might be 200 credits?”

The Batter handed him the money, confused by his behavior but not wanting to cause any trouble. Zacharie didn’t even count them, just stuffing them into his backpack with uncharacteristic roughness, then turning and starting to walk, hands shoved carelessly into his pockets.

The Batter just trailed behind him, his exhaustion now no longer suffocating him, but still a present pressure in his mind, making his feet drag just slightly, his bat simply hanging at his side. The trip was shorter now, simply walking to the red block in one of the other barns, and when they reappeared in Zone 3 the Batter laid a hand on Zacharie’s shoulder before he could walk away. Zacharie turned sharply, and even with the mask over his face, the Batter could tell he was glaring.

But he relaxed again when he saw the open, confused expression on the Batter’s face. He turned away, looking to one side.

Neither spoke for a few moments.

“What did I do?” the Batter asked finally, not wanting to beat around the bush in this case, just wanting to understand and fix whatever was wrong.

Zacharie sighed, running his hand through his hair, by now well-practiced in doing so without disturbing his mask. “Nothing, my friend. Nothing that’s fair for me to expect of you, at least… I suppose that I just…” he trailed off. “…Never you mind, friend, it’s not important.”

The Batter’s expression reflected just how much he doubted that, but he said nothing, allowing the silence to stretch forward between them indefinitely. When he did speak, his tone of voice nearly startled Zacharie.

“I have a question,” he said simply, and after a moment the masked man nodded for him to continue. His voice was startlingly earnest to the both of them. “Zacharie, are you my friend?”

A stillness unlike anything else, not even paralleled by the purified, still, empty seas around Zone 1, the void of the Nothingness, the sky over the library in Zone 2. The kind of stillness that made you terrified to move, that made you wonder if you could move even if you tried to, and sunk into your skin and bones like cold until you were paralyzed.

And then the Batter noticed how Zacharie’s fists were clenched at his sides, how tense his every muscle was, a far cry from his usual calm and relaxed stance, his careless but mindful demeanor. He was beginning to shake slightly, and the Batter realized he couldn’t even tell if the other man was breathing.

“Why did I have to be programmed with a heart?” Zacharie finally rasped, voice small, broken, and the Batter nearly recoiled at how sharp and raw Zacharie was in that moment. “To answer your question, I don’t know if I’m your friend, Batter. I think I might be, from what little I’ve seen of you outside of professional encounters. I call you “friend” and “amigo” pretty often, for whatever that’s worth. I like to think I’m a friend to you despite everything that’s happened. But I know for a fact that the Player _isn’t_ mine.”

The Batter watched as Zacharie turned and walked away, and didn’t dare chase after him. Everything was quiet. Everything was still. And just like that, the Batter was alone.

It was just as scary as he thought it’d be.

**Author's Note:**

> "No entiendo a veces este hombre" = Sometimes I do not understand this man
> 
> [[hmu @thetriggeredhappy on tumblr, have a good october nerds]]


End file.
